PRECAUPRI: Regulatory strategies and research needs to compose and specify a European policy on the application of the precautionary principle

• Forschungsstelle: EU FRP
• Projektnummer: 00.0487
• Projekttitel Englisch: PRECAUPRI: Regulatory strategies and research needs to compose and specify a European policy on the application of the precautionary principle

Schlüsselwörter (Englisch)

Precautionary principle; chemical pre-screening; filters; global threats; Pandora; ubiquity; persistence bioaccumulation; transformation products

Alternative Projektnummern (Englisch)

EU project number: HPV1-CT-0001

Forschungsprogramme (Englisch)

EU-programme: 5. Frame Research Programme - 4.6 Other

Kurzbeschreibung (Englisch)

See abstract

Partner und Internationale Organisationen (Englisch)

Coordinator: Center of Technology Assessment (D)

Abstract (Englisch)

General: PRECAUPRI is a thematic network project conducted under the auspices of the EC's STRATA Programme. As such, it is intended to help inform the application of the precautionary principle in the development of EU research, development and demonstration activities. The project will run from April 2001 to March 2003.
The particular aim of the project is to develop a scientifically sound, politically feasible, legally unambiguous and democratically legitimated concept of precuation. This will provide a policy framework for the operationalising of the precautionary principle in different risk areas and ensuring specificity and predictability for the various actors involved. The project will achive this through a carefully constructed process of deliberation among researchers, administrators, policy makers and business and public interest stakeholder groups.
The framework developed in the project is intended to enable a robust response to the spcific challenges of uncertainty and ambiguity in dealing with risks. First, different risk management approaches will be analysed theoretically, leading to the development of a general conceptual scheme for the articulation of precaution with other approaches in risk management. Second, this policy framework will be empirically tested using chemical risk regulation in order to evaluate the theoretical and practical feasibility of the proposed policy framework. Third, a series of four workshops involving the major stakeholders in the relevant risk arenas will be held in order to reflect the policy framework and to gain input for higher legitimacy. Fourth, the final approach of the policy framework will be formulated in scientifically, politically and legally relevant terms, so that it can be used for policy making on a European level.
Swiss: The Zürich group at ETH uses the regulation of chemicals as an example for the application of the precautionary principle to industrial innovation. To this end they developed a filter sequence technique to precautionary pre-screening of organic chemicals. This technique fits into the general PRECAUPRI model which provides three consecutive levels: pre-screening, regulatory appraisal, and risk management. For the pre-screening level the Zürich group designed a series of precautionary filters. Each filter corresponds to a special threat scenario and has to fulfill a set of requirements in order to guarantee the overall performance of the series as a whole. The filter series under consideration is tailored to global chemical threats. (For a precautionary screening relating to non-global threat scenarios analogous further filters must complement the here-presented series).
During the period the group could achieve a surprising success: after appropriate calibration the filter sequence they designed completely separated economically important high production volume chemicals from precarious chemicals mentioned in the protocols of Montreal, Kyoto and Stockholm. It was shown to reproduce in a shortcut important results of a long and cumbersome historical development. This is far more than they expected at the beginning of the project.
In principle, the filter sequence now can be used in the assessment of new and existing organic chemicals. As the filtering technique is simple and cheap this could pave the way out of the new and existing chemicals problem.

Datenbankreferenzen (Englisch)

Swiss Database: Euro-DB of the
State Secretariat for Education and Research
Hallwylstrasse 4
CH-3003 Berne, Switzerland
Tel. [phone]
Swiss Project-Number: 00.0487